Lawsuit Accuses Sean Combs of Taking Part in Gang Rape

A woman suing Sean Combs says reading about other sexual assault lawsuits filed against the hip-hop mogul gave her the confidence to come forward with her own story. The woman, who filed a lawsuit against Combs and former Bad Boy Records president Harve Pierre, says the two man and a third man gang raped her in 2003, when she was 17 years old, the New York Times reports. She alleges that she met Pierre and another man in a lounge in the Detroit area and was persuaded to travel with them on a private jet to New York City to visit Combs' recording studio. Once there, the lawsuit states, she was plied with drugs and alcohol and raped by the then-34-year-old Combs and the two other men.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, "became more and more inebriated, eventually to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age," the suit states. The suit says she drifted in and out of consciousness as she was raped in the studio's bathroom, and that she was taken to the airport and sent home shortly afterward. The court filing includes photos of the woman in the studio. In one, she is sitting on Combs' lap. "The depravity of these abhorrent acts has, not surprisingly, scarred Doe for life," attorney Douglas H. Windor said in a statement to Rolling Stone. He said his client suffered "serious psychological and emotional distress, entitling her to an award of compensatory and punitive damages."

The lawsuit was filed under New York City's Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which opened a two-year window for victims of gender-based violence to file lawsuits outside the statute of limitations, the Guardian reports. Three other lawsuits against Combs were filed under the state's Adult Survivors Act, which expired last month. In a statement posted on X Wednesday, Combs said he "did not do any of the awful things being alleged" and vowed to fight for his name and "the truth." "Enough is enough. For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy," he said. "Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday." (More Sean Combs stories.)